SOURCE: “William Vaughn Moody,” in The Yale Review, Vol. 2, No. 7, 1913, pp. 688-703.

In the following essay, Lewis identifies Moody with the Symbolist movement.

One of the great poets of our day died in 1910. He had created no public furor, but his power had been deeply felt by many; and to them his untimely death was a disaster. The recent publication of his collected works has reawakened their enthusiasm, for some of his best poetry is posthumous; and a wider appreciation of his genius is sure to come soon.

One's first impression of Moody is that he was a Symbolist—that his poetry marks the high-water level of the Symbolist movement. But Symbolism is in fact no longer a movement; it is partly a memory and partly an achievement. Even before Moody's day the tide had begun to recede; but it had first overflowed all the adjacent fields, and...